1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to the art of refrigerated appliances and, more particularly, to an adjustable retainer assembly for maintaining food containers of varying widths in a desired storage condition within a storage unit provided on a refrigerator door.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
It is well known in the art of refrigerated appliances to provide structure on inner liners of fresh food and freezer doors to support shelf units for retaining various food containers. Typically, the shelf units are in the form of fixed or removable shelves or bins that are incorporated onto the door liner. The removable shelves can be arranged at various positions on the inner liner to provide spacing to accommodate food containers having varying heights. In addition, the food containers must be adequately retained so as to prevent unnecessary toppling when the refrigerator door is operated.
More specifically, without proper retention, food containers can topple over when the refrigerator door is opened and/or closed. That is, if too much opening/closing force is applied, a food container may become dislodged from the shelf, topple over, spill or even break when the refrigerator door is abruptly opened and/or closed. In an attempt to solve this problem, it has been proposed to attach additional retaining structure to the door liner or to the shelves themselves. Such retaining structures typically take the form of retaining bars that apply pressure to an upper portion of the food container. The retaining bars hold the container in place when the door is operated. U.S. Pat. No. 5,567,029 discloses various product retainer arrangements, each including a removable retainer element mounted to an inner liner of a refrigerator door. The retainer element is capable of being pivoted to accommodate a deep refrigerator door shelf in order to retain containers having a variety of heights. However, in addition to the need to accommodate various container heights, the width of the container must also be considered. In today's marketplace, there is simply no uniformity in the width of food containers currently available.
Containers having various widths are subject to the same forces and drawbacks associated with retaining containers having varying heights. Specifically, unless adequately restrained, the food containers can shift about the shelf, spill, topple over or break when the door is abruptly opened or closed. While retaining bars help protect taller containers from opening and closing forces, they are not effective in retaining shorter containers, particularly those of varying widths. That is, the retaining bar will only grip or retain the widest of the containers, while allowing the smaller sized containers to move about. In an attempt to solve this problem, the prior art contains examples of flexible retaining structure, such as bungee cords or netting, that can conform to the shape of articles on the shelves. While effective to some degree, flexible retaining structure typically requires two hands to operate. That is, one hand must deflect the retaining structure, while the other hand places the food container on the shelf. Given the inconvenience of operating the retaining structure, the structure may fall into disuse, or be removed so as to enable easier access to the storage unit.
Based on the above, it would be desirable to have an adjustable retainer assembly for refrigerator door shelves which can accommodate food containers of various widths. More specifically, there exits a need for an easily accessible, adjustable retaining assembly that can be incorporated into new refrigerators or retrofitted into existing refrigerator shelf units for use in effectively retaining a wide range of containers.